Voting age
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
A voting age is a minimum age established by law that a person must attain to be eligible to vote in a public election. The vast majority of countries in the world have established a voting age. Most governments consider that those of any age lower than the chosen threshold lack the necessary capacity to independently decide how to cast a vote. The voting age is often of such importance that it is set by means of a constitutional provision.
At the present time the voting age across the world is typically 18. When the right to vote was first accorded in democracies the voting age was generally set at 21, or in some cases at an even higher level. In the 1970s widespread reform led to a reduction to 18 in a large number of countries. Debate is currently underway in many places on proposals to reduce the voting age below 18. In May 2009, Danish Member of Parliament Mogens Jensen presented an initiative to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg to lower the voting age in Europe to 16 (see http://assembly.coe.int/Documents/WorkingDocs/Doc09/EDOC11895.pdf ).
See also
